Bristol festival of ideas: what to see and when

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/apr/13/bristol-festival-ideas-what-see-when

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Ten years ago, as part of Bristol's (failed) bid to be European Capital of Culture, we launched the Bristol festival of ideas. We wanted more debate in the city. We also wanted to celebrate the work of great writers, commentators and thinkers in and outside the city. In the past 10 years we've run more than 2,000 events, as well as major projects on Brunel, Charles Darwin and Bristol aerospace; we've launched a new annual festival of economics; started a publishing programme and a young people's festival of ideas (in May they will discuss the army and war); and – this year – we will have the UK's largest programme commemorating the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the first world war.

Our month-long May festival has nearly 100 speakers in more than 60 events – many of them listed below. For the 10th anniversary we will take time to reflect, with our Observer partners, on some of the issues of our time: inequality, the size of the state and the future of cities with a series of panels that will run through 2014. We have debates on Europe and we will help relaunch Pelican Books – a festival of ideas for everyone throughout its long and distinguished history – with Ha-Joon Chang, Robin Dunbar, Orlando Figes and Bruce Hood. We also look at Lynn Barber's illustrious career; take a walk in the footsteps of the Bristol suffragettes in a time of war with historian Lucienne Boyce; look at Gone With the Wind 75 years on; and hear Everything But the Girl's Ben Watt talk about his life, the lives of his parents, where we come from and how we love and live together.

In 10 years we've achieved what we set out to do and we're not stopping here. 2015 aims to be our biggest festival yet as we make Bristol – European Green Capital that year – the centre of debate about living, working, playing and learning in the new ways needed. We're going to make as real as we can the words "sustainable" and "resilient" through political and science summits, a national arts programme, and a year-long Festival of the Future City that in September will culminate in four days of debate and discussion, bringing together city leaders, scientists, businesses, artists, politicians, media commentators and more.

The festival of ideas came out of a failed bid. In the 10 years since we've made a place where ideas are celebrated, developed and delivered and which continues to offer much to the world. The next decade will be even better.

The Observer Presents series

Mark Kermode: Hatchet Job

The UK's most trusted and most outspoken film critic, Mark Kermode, provides his unique blend of ranting and analysis, trenchant opinion, hilarious autobiographical anecdotes, passionate personal prejudices, entertaining diversions and scathing, sardonic humour. It's the perfect event for anyone who's ever expressed an opinion about a movie. (20 May)

Is Inequality Inevitable or Necessary?

Inequality is now front-page news around the world. It's not just the difference between the 1% and the rest, but also about the decline of the middle class, the living wage vs the minimum wage, the portrayal of the poor in the media and more. Speakers include Yvonne Roberts, the Observer; Gavin Kelly, Resolution Foundation; Duncan Exley, Equality Trust; Andrew Haldane, Bank of England; and writer Beatrix Campbell. (21 May)

Jay Rayner: The Observer Lecture 2014: A Greedy Man in a Hungry World

The doctrine of local food is dead. Farmers' markets are merely a lifestyle choice for the affluent middle classes. And "organic" has become a marketing label that is way past its sell-by date. One of the country's most vocal and hardnosed critics of how and what we eat today is ready to explain why, taking us on a journey through the edible landscape, with a few belly laughs along the way. (21 May)

The Future of Cities

Cities are the future for the planet but how do we make them sustainable, resilient, prosperous and fair for all? City leaders and writers from around the world debate the future of cities. Chaired by Rowan Moore of the Observer, in association with the Academy of Urbanism, speakers include Jaime Lerner, former three-times mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, and Wulf Daseking, former director of City Planning Office, Freiburg. (24 May)

Is a Smaller State a Better State?

The state has been getting progressively smaller – and is likely to continue to reduce in size. But is this right? Is it inevitable that the state will continue to reduce the work that it does, passing roles to the private sector? What happened to the "big society" and does this have a role? What about state support for innovation? Speakers including John O'Connell (TaxPayers' Alliance) and Baron Glasman (political theorist). Chaired by Julian Coman, the Observer. (27 May)

Jonathan Meades: In Conversation with Rachel Cooke

Jonathan Meades, one of our leading critics and writers on architecture, places and cities, author of the remarkable novel Pompey and of a new memoir about growing up in Salisbury, is interviewed onstage by the Observer's Rachel Cooke. This special evening also features clips from his television films. (28 May)

Arts and media

Jeremy Deller: Public Art Now

Turner prize-winner Jeremy Deller joins Situations director Claire Doherty to talk about his extraordinary artworks, his exhibition English Magic at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery and the launch of a new national programme challenging forms of public art. (4 May)

John Hegarty: Creativity: There Are No Rules

Everyone today is challenged to come up with creative ideas. But how do you start? John Hegarty, one of the world's most famous advertising creatives, shares his insights, encouraging us to think boldly and be fearless, but most importantly to have fun. (7 May)

Ian Nairn: Films and debate

One of the greatest writers on architecture and places, Ian Nairn led debate through the 1950s to the 1970s. In this event, we show some of his television programmes with a panel debate on his work and legacy. Panellists include Gillian Darley (co-author of Nairn's biography, Words in Place); Bristol mayor George Ferguson; John Grindrod, author of Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain; and Owen Hatherley (editor of Nairn's Towns). (11 May)

Trevor Cox: Sonic Wonderland: a Scientific Odyssey of Sound

Creaking glaciers, stalactite organs, musical roads, squeaking beaches and echoing Mayan pyramids: Trevor Cox has tracked down these and more in his search for the "sonic wonders of the world". He talks about sound and takes us on a sound walk of Bristol. (11 May)

Fiction and books: living today, history, identity and war

Some of the finest and most interesting writers around reflect on the times we live in and where we come from, including Irvine Welsh on how we look and live in his The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins (7 May); Suzannah Dunn on keeping historical fiction real (8 May); Samantha Ellis on literary heroines (11 May); Cara Hoffman on war and her family in Be Safe I Love You (13 May); Kamila Shamsie on fiction and history in A God in Every Stone (19 May); Sadie Jones on love and obsession in Fallout (20 May); Dinaw Mengestu on identity in All Our Names (27 May); Siri Hustvedt on the world of art in her The Blazing World and Other Writings (30 May).

John Carey: The Unexpected Professor

Literary critic John Carey looks at his life in books and the reading that has formed the backbone of his life. (13 May)

The politics of food

Julian Baggini: A Feast of Film and Philosophy

Julian Baggini discusses the relationship between food and philosophy, and how film can provide a philosophical insight into the meaning of food in our lives. (7 May)

Jack Monroe: A Girl Called Jack: Politics and Food

Jack Monroe talks about her recipes, poverty, politics, and food banks, and why she won't keep quiet. (10 May)

Hunting the Hunters: At War with the Whalers

Laurens de Groot, Sea Shepherd, looks at fighting the Japanese whalers. (13 May)

Philip Lymbery: Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat

The campaigner and writer discusses the human cost of mega-farming, campaigns to change our current food production and how we eat, and how to achieve a better farming future. (16 May)

Science and maths

Alex Bellos: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life

Alex Bellos takes us on a journey of mathematical discovery, demonstrating how numbers have come to be our friends and how they have changed our world. (9 May)

Mark Miodownik: Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape our Man-Made World

Mark Miodownik reveals the miracles of craft, design and engineering that surround us every day: from the teacup to the jet engine, the silicon chip to the paper clip, to today's self-healing metals and bionic implants. (12 May)

James Lovelock with John Gray: A Rough Guide to the Future

James Lovelock continues, in his 95th year, to be the great scientific visionary of our age. He introduces new ideas and reflects on how scientific advances are made, and his own remarkable life as a scientist. (15 May)

Lewis Dartnell: The Knowledge

How – if the worst happens – we build a new world from scratch. (16 May)

Gerd Gigerenzer: Risk Savvy – How to Make Good Decisions

Gerd Gigerenzer argues that everyone can learn to deal with risk on their own and that democracy needs citizens who refuse to surrender their money, their welfare, and their liberty. (19 May)

The Wonder of Physics

Pedro G Ferreira, professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and Jon Butterworth, a leading physicist at Cern, discuss competition, the value of collaboration, the wonder of scientific discovery from Einstein to the Higgs boson and the opportunities and magic that physics makes possible (29 May)

WW1 and history

The Complete Blackadder Goes Forth Debate

Earlier this year some politicians and academics attacked the Blackadder view of the first world war – doomed youth, led to their deaths by donkeys in a futile conflict. A showing of the complete Blackadder Goes Forth series is followed by a debate with historians Stephen Badsey, Jeremy Banning and Kate Williams. (10 May)

Tim Butcher: The Trigger – Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War

Former Balkan war correspondent Tim Butcher retraces the journey of Gavrilo Princip, the teenage assassin who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914, revealing how events that were sparked in 1914 have echoes that can still be heard today. (12 May)

Richard J Evans: Altered Pasts – Counterfactuals in History

The distinguished historian charts the seemingly inexorable rise of "counterfactual" history and casts a critical eye over some of its claims. (28 May)

New-wave feminism

A special series looking at Page 3, FGM and the life of Eleanor Marx. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett and Holly Baxter talk about their feminist blog, the Vagenda, arguing that it's time for all to push for change in the media (11 May). AnyBody, UK chapter of international initiative Endangered Bodies, explores the ways in which ownership is claimed over a woman's body by people other than herself (17 May). Young Bristol campaigners against female genital mutilation talk about how they broke down the wall of silence around FGM, achieve national recognition and change (17 May). Lucy- Anne Holmes from No More Page 3 talks about and growing the campaign to persuade the Sun to stop publishing images of topless models (17 May). Award-winning comedian Rosie Wilby traces a journey through early-90s feminism, blurring personal and political history, with a healthy dose of 21st-century cynicism (17 May). Looking back to earlier campaigners, Rachel Holmes and Andrew Davies discuss the life of Eleanor Marx (11 May).

Philosophy, politics and life

Kenan Malik: The Quest for a Moral Compass

Kenan Malik confronts some of humanity's deepest questions: where do values come from? Is God necessary for moral guidance? Are there absolute moral truths? How have social needs and political desires shaped moral thought and global history? (12 May)

Mariana Mazzucato: The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Private vs Public Sector Myths

Business leaders, entrepreneurs and many politicians claim that the boldest innovations come from the private sector. Mariana Mazzucato argues that we need to rethink the idea of the state, making it a catalyst for big and bold ideas. (27 May)

Arianna Huffington: Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Happier Life

We have come to accept that success is equated with overwork, burnout, sleep deprivation, never seeing your family, being connected through email 24/7 and exhaustion. Arianna Huffington argues that a successful life is made up of more than just money and status and must also include personal care, health, and fulfilment. (31 May)

Urban Matters

Patrick Keiller: The View from the Train

In his groundbreaking films, Patrick Keiller sets out to transform familiar perceptions of the places where we live, the cities and landscapes of our everyday lives. He reveals the hitherto hidden stories about the human habitat we take for granted. (14 May)

Frédéric Gros: A Philosophy of Walking

Frédéric Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B — the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble — and shows what these tell us about ourselves. (14 May)

Professor Sir David King: Future Cities

The former chief science adviser to the government, now chairing the technology Strategy Board's Future Cities Catapult, looks at the future of cities. (19 May)

Edmund White: Inside a Pearl – My Years in Paris

Edmund White, master memoirist, turns his attention to his 15 years in Paris, the sexiest and most exciting times in his life, providing a hugely significant document of cultural history and a brilliant examination of a city. (22 May)

Business and finance

Kwasi Kwarteng: War and Gold

The historian and MP looks at the financial world and its troubled history over 500 years and the powerful relationship between war and gold. (15 May)

Margaret Heffernan: A Bigger Prize – Why Competition Isn't Everything and How We Do Better

Margaret Heffernan shows how our dog-eat-dog culture regularly produces just what we don't want: rising levels of fraud, cheating, stress, inequality and political stalemate. She argues that the future belongs to those practising creative collaboration, the bigger prize. (30 May)

Ed Conway: The Summit – The Biggest Battle of World War Two

The 1944 summit at Bretton Woods resulted in a successful overhaul of the international monetary system, against a backdrop of rivalry, drinking, drama and war, that is still having an impact today. Ed Conway brings one of the most colourful and important economic gatherings to life. (30 May)